Blogging from Dubai

April 1, 2008

Categories: Uncategorized

Here in Dubai for the GETEX conference, the Gulf Education and Training Exhibition, held in partnership with ISTE. Interesting kind of place. We have been meeting with ministers and educational agencies. It is the most top-down education space I have seen since working in Los Angeles Unified. Nothing specifically about media for this post except to note that I have the new Olympus 770 SWcamera, which is waterproof and shockproof. Truly waterproof as we found last night when someone whimsically put in into a drink (still works). Although somewhere on some blog I suspect there is a picture of me licking the sweet beverage off my camera. Waterproof, yes, but corn syrup can gum up anything. They used it against German tanks, I think. Discovery has a booth right next to Naizak Global Engineering Systems (I have pictures). Nearby is the booth for software designed for “maths”(I have pictures). Note on Dubai: There was a Ferrari outside the hotel with the license plate 865. There are a lot of fancy cars in the Gulf so if you want to make an impression you have to have the right license plate. In California, you try to be clever and be the first one with a cool plate (DEN STAR), for which you pay a little more. In Dubai, it’s an auction. The Khaleej Times reported yesterday the winning bidding for plate # 800 was $330,000 (Dh990,000). The really hot numbers went for $700,000 + (Dh2.3 million). ABC News notes the record was $14.3 million (#1). I have pictures. Now there’s a way to raise money for education in California…These are the folks, BTW, that are in the market for a $40,000 iPod. Final note: Where are these pictures? I made the mistake I never make and didn’t check closely enough on the cable connection the Olympus to the computer. It looks so-oo much like a standard BlackBerry/Canon/ etc. USB cable. But it wasn’t. New cameras (arrgh). And a new card format so my adapters are useless. Now to see if I can find one in Dubai for less than $40,000. Stay tuned.

2 Comments

Gotta love that 865 license plate…that is Knoxville’s area code. If you alpha-code it out it spells VOL. Seriously. The entire state used to be 615, but Knoxville broke out and chose VOL as the area code of choice! Even in Dubai! : )